SELF in BOOKS

The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet,
By Freeman J. Dyson

Technology and Social Justice, pages 65-67

Solar energy is most abundant where it is most needed, in the countryside rather than in cities, in the tropical countries where most of the population lives rather than in temperate latitudes. Recently I got to know a young man called Bob Freling who runs a venture called SELF, the Solar Electric Light Fund. Freling is not a scientist. He is a linguist with a passion for languages. He is fluent in Spanish, Russian, French, Chinese, Portuguese, and Indonesian. He has the know‑how to operate small enterprises in many different countries with different cultures and different ways of doing business. The idea of SELF is to bring electricity generated by sunlight to remote places that have no other way to get electricity.

A working solar energy system can make an enormous difference to the quality of life in a tropical village. Thirty or fifty watts of direct current is enough to run a couple of fluorescent lights, a radio, or a small black and white television for several hours every night. Each but in a village can have its own system. No central generator, no power lines, no transformers are needed. Sunlight distributes power equally to each rooftop. Children can read and study at night in their homes. The village is in touch with the outside world.

SELF is one of the organizations dedicated to making this happen. It is a charitable foundation, but is does not give solar‑energy systems to the villagers for free. The villagers pay market prices for the hardware. SELF gives them credit so they can spread their payments over four years. SELF also pays the people who train the villagers to install and operate and maintain the hardware. SELF now has village projects working in eleven countries, all in remote places unlikely to reached in the near future by electric power lines. The most recent start was on the island of Guadalcanal, not far from the battlefield where one of the bloodiest campaigns of World War II was fought. Technology now brings light to the island instead of death and destruction. The village that is now electrified is still accessible only by canoe. The solar hardware is light and rugged enough to travel by canoe.

One day there will be a global Internet carried by a network of low altitude satellites linked by radio and laser communications. Every point on earth will be within range of one or more of the satellites all the time. But not every point on earth will be able to communicate with the Internet. For places without electricity to power transmitters and receivers, the satellites overhead will be useless. The villagers where SELF has supplied solarenergy systems will be hooked up to the net. Their neighbors all around will still be isolated.

Why do we need a charitable foundation to do this work? Why cannot the villagers do it by themselves? Unfortunately, the technology of solar energy is still too expensive for an average third‑world village to afford. Even with the help provided by SELF, only villages with a substantial cash economy can afford it. The present cost of a minimal solar‑energy installation is about five hundred dollars per household.

About half of this cost is due to the photovoltaic collector panels that convert sunlight into electricity. The other half is spent on accessories such as storage batteries and control circuitry. The cost of collector panels is now about five dollars per watt. This is the cost of commercially available units that are properly packaged to work outdoors in rough weather. Experimental units that are under development will be substantially cheaper. The prevailing belief among economists is that solar energy will not supplant kerosene and other fossil fuels on a massive scale until the price comes down below one dollar per watt. Nobody can tell when, if ever, the existing photovoltaic technology will become cheap enough to supply the world's needs. All that we know for sure is that there is enough sunlight to supply our needs many times over, if we can find a way to use it.

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